NEA Representative Assembly

It's been awhile I know....

A few weeks ago, I went to Philadelphia for a week long trip to attend the NEA Representative Assembly. Even though I wasn't excited about the prospect of being away from home for a week, it ended up being a really amazing experience. Words cannot begin to describe the feeling you get when you walk into a room filled with 9,000 educators from around the country. Some of you may shudder at the thought but I found it inspiring. It was also really amazing to learn a bit more about the NEA. This year marked our 150th anniversary-the NEA was created just a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War. What was really neat was to learn that the NEA has been at the forefront of all the major civil rights changes in history....I definitely felt proud to be a teacher!

And the things we talked about! Over the course of six days we discussed and voted on over 130 new business items, legislative amendments, by-laws and resolutions. The topics ranged from monarch butterfly curriculum (seriously) to supporting the end of genocide in Darfour to NEA's stance on the war to laws allowing drug testing of bus drivers involved in accidents. Personally, I had no idea that the NEA was involved in such global issues.

We also had some special guest appearances...Hillary Clinton, Barack O'Bama, John Edwards and our very own Christopher Dodd. We had a few other Presidential candidates too--even one Republican! Of course their messages were all the same, and the promises they made were ones that all teachers would love to hear: higher pay, better health insurance and the hot topic of the hour: the lack of funding for No Child Left Behind. Richard Dreyfuss came and spoke too, although to be honest, his speech didn't impress me all that much.

All in all the experience was a good one, and any teachers out there- if you have the chance to attend then I definitely recommend it.